Resurgence
by seven dials
Summary: Youji starts isolating himself after suffering a loss of his own, leaving an aggravated Ken determined to snap him out of his daze. Sequel to 'Stasis'. One-shot, completed; rated for strong language and content.


**Resurgence**  
A Weiss Kreuz fanfiction by laila

Standard Copyright Disclaimer: Weiss Kreuz, it's characters, indices, and everything related to it are quite obviously nothing to do with me save for the fact that I get a lot of enjoyment out of temporarily appropriating them. They remain the property of Kyoko Tsuchiya, Koyasu Takehito, Project Weiss and Movic in spite of what I might wish. I mean no disrespect to any of these individuals or groups and would like to assure them that I am not seeking any kind of profit from writing this thing, unless warm fangirl fuzzies can be counted as capital.

Author's notes: The third in the arc of fluffily angsty Yoken fics I've been toying with for the last few weeks, beginning with 'Proximity', which was intended to be nothing but a one-shot, and continuing with 'Stasis'. I've been writing these things solely because of the sheer dearth of cute Youji x Ken fanfics out there. Once again, this fic should be perfectly readable even if one has no acquaintance with the previous two stories in this series, but in all fairness I've got to mention that it has come out as a rather less decorous piece than were its two big brothers. If you don't like yaoi – steer clear.

* * *

_… Still I search for light.  
I am the trigger, I choose my final way  
Whether I bloom or fall, is up to me._  
From 'ROSIER'; Luna Sea

After touching death, Ken clung fiercely to the knowledge that he was alive.

He reveled in sensation and corporeality. Touch, taste, smell; the senses became heightened. The littlest things became pointed, after a mission. Scents – damp grass, earth, the thick copper tang of spilt blood. The wind, the chill of the night. Raindrops on his cheeks, his bare arms. Goose pimples. It hadn't used to occur to him it could be possible to take comfort from being cold and damp. Even pain became a blessing, when it showed he could still feel. Touching death made him want to affirm the proof of his continued existence.

But he never knew quite how to do so. For with it came guilt, the belief that the last thing he had the right to be feeling was glad to be alive. He did though, and the feelings made him feel uncomfortable, ill at ease both with his companions and himself. Afterwards – provided the four of them had remained fundamentally whole, or bodily at least– was always difficult; he suspected that none of his teammates knew quite what to do with themselves. Certainly Ken didn't. Conversation died. He found himself abruptly recalled to the reason they had come together. Recalled that, by rights, he should never have met any of his colleagues. Wondered, who are these people? Who, for that matter, the Hell am I?

Once they got back, more often than not they would split up with barely a word said. He would try to smile and it would feel as wrong as it looked. Ken knew none of them slept very well the night after a mission. Tomorrow, once the world claimed them, it would be fine. But getting through the night – that was hard. Harder than the mission? It depended. Depended on the mission and on how one defined _hard_.

He stretched his naked hands out in front of him and gazed at them in detached wonder. They looked curiously blameless. They looked like anyone else's hands. They didn't seem stained but they felt it. He needed a shower; recognized his failure to take one as a twisted attempt at atonement…

… God, he thought such strange things when it was all over and he was alone with himself.

Ken didn't lean on the balcony tonight. Instead he stuck by the wall, resting his back against it, and wondered what to do with his guilty hands. Even through the heavy leather of the jacket he still hadn't shed, the stonework he leant on felt cold. A clear night, crisp as a razor with the slightest hint of a breeze, the moon waning but far too bright, lending the world a cold, unasked-for clarity. He couldn't see the point in going to bed when he already knew sleep would elude him.

He had often reflected it was no accident that Weiss went in after dark. He felt that, when alone in the shadows, there was nowhere to hide from the truth about himself. The darkness, he believed, knew his secrets. The evening knew him for what he really was, and it would ask him why he lied. Why he pretended to be anything other than a killer. It would demand to know what right he felt he had to pretend normality, what right he had to claim happiness. He couldn't answer. There were no answers. Ken carried on going about the business of living only because he didn't know what else to do.

The sun set: to Ken, the world became an atavism. Became primal. So did he.

His beliefs were, perhaps, little more than a relic of childhood; the logical, adult extension of believing in the terrifying titillation that were the monsters in the closet. Had he ever believed in them? Hard to tell. Ken couldn't connect to his childhood, couldn't feel the tug of continuity which, he imagined, an ordinary young man would have done had he chosen to look back on his own brief past. The past contained nothing he wanted to remember and while that remained he would never be much of a one for nostalgia. Almost better that his childhood felt as if it belonged to some other man.

He looked forward, always forward. He knew the others thought him optimistic, worryingly so, but hope for the future was all Ken had. It was hardly surprising that he had given up trying to understand Aya when the redhead lived only for the past. Was it possible, he would sometimes wonder, to live vicariously through a comatose girl? But Aya's past was precious to him, was something worth cherishing: Ken's held nothing but ashes.

Kase had left him with nothing. Only the pale ghosts of open wounds scored upon his skin, and a lasting hatred of fire.

(He'd lit a perfect pyre for a dead dream…)

And, paradoxically, hope. Hope and a strange strain of expediency. Ken couldn't live in the past when the past held nothing he wanted to remember. So he looked forward and hoped, hopelessly, for better things from tomorrow. Because what was done was done. Vengeance had been a transient thing and essentially unfulfilling, the macabre coda to a story which had been bleak enough without it, bringing only the knowledge that his own betrayal had been even more complete than he could ever have dreamt… it was no wonder he couldn't understand Aya.

Youji either. Not now.

The clearest thing he remembered thinking about Neu – Asuka, Youji called her – was _oh, God, it's Kase_. The same script clumsily rewritten for two different actors. Different nuances, different inflections, with his own name replaced with Youji's, Kase's by Asuka's and Creeper's with Schreient's, but the same old story. The same conclusion: the betrayal, the death by Youji's own hand, the knowledge it had somehow been inevitable— Hell is here. And, Jesus _Christ_, even at second-hand it had hurt all over again but it hadn't just been the memories that had pained him. It had been Youji, his lack of faith, his desperation to cling on to what once had been because it had been good, once. He'd been there too and Youji hadn't even remembered it.

Ken hadn't been able to put his finger on why Neu's arrival had irritated him so much at the time, for all he had kept it hidden. It had been only later he realized it was jealousy and it had appalled him. Jealousy, over a dead woman's too-corporeal phantom… Typical, he thought. Bloody typical. I finally let go of Kase and _Neu_ shows up!

… and now, with Youji the one who was pining, with Youji isolating himself and choosing distance, Ken knew that they had only come full circle. It seemed fitting. For in truth they had gone nowhere, found nothing: the future he had hoped to discover had turned out to be nothing at all. Maybe it had never meant anything to Youji, never been anything more to the blonde than contact in a vacuum and he himself a surrogate, a convenient body – Christ, was that really all that he had been? Truly? The question nagged at him. if that was so, however reluctantly, Ken knew he would have to step back.

He couldn't compete with a ghost. Had no wish to. Hopeless to try and outdo the impossibly admirable creature selective memory could create.

Ken knew without having to ask that Youji was still awake; ever so faintly, the smoke from the young man's cigarettes tainted the night wind. The blonde was stood, like him, on his own balcony, gratefully marooned in the placid sea of his own regrets. Thinking, perhaps, of Asuka. Neu. Whoever she was. It irritated Ken. Shouldn't have done, but it did. You choose the past, Youji, or you choose the future. You can't have both.

_Asuka, Asuka, Asuka_, Neu had said in disgust. Ken felt like saying the same, and with the same note of contempt.

It wasn't that he didn't understand. It was that he didn't understand any more. Frowning, Ken turned away from his own door and headed for the stairs. Breaking the established pattern, the routine which said the four of them would slip away from one another, afterwards. He didn't care. Impetuous, impatient, Ken wanted an answer and he wanted it now. He'd chosen the future. He _wanted_ a future—

(The past was ash.)

But what about Youji? What did he want? Asuka? Christ, Ken hoped not. He'd thought Youji had more sense than that, once; now he wasn't so sure. No way that was going to happen, not any more. What was dead was dead – simple. And about time Youji realized that. The guy couldn't have it all ways.

"I tried to warn you."

No greeting. No attempt to subtly work any conversation round to the subject in the hope of breaking it gently. Ken watched, arms folded and expression set, as Youji raised his head in surprise and turned to him, his eyes searching for focus as they came to rest on his face. The young man had been lounging against the balustrade, looking out across the street but seeing nothing at all. The scattered butts around his feet told Ken that he had been chain-smoking, probably pretty much since the moment they got back. When had they got back? Ken couldn't have said for sure. Some time ago, he imagined. How long did it take to smoke a cigarette, anyway?

(Ken had tried smoking, once, out of simple curiosity. It had made him feel like he was suffocating, left him gasping for air and with an uncomfortable burning sensation in the back of the throat. _Burning_— he hadn't tried it again.)

It was coming out all wrong and he didn't care. He'd had no idea what he was going to say to Youji, how he was going to approach the matter of Asuka and Neu; he only knew this hadn't been it. Perhaps it had been inevitable though, the bluntness. Ken had never been much of a one for ducking an issue.

"Ken?" Youji sounded confused. Looked confused. "What are you doing here?" What are you talking about, he would have said, but that he already knew or could at least guess at.  
"I _tried_ to warn you." Ken said again, taking a pace forward and gazing levelly at Youji, already aware that he was irked and barely bothering to hide it. "Don't you remember all that crap _I_ went through over Kase? It's all the goddamn same, why couldn't you _see_ that? You just don't pay attention, do you—?" He only just managed to bite back the _idiot_.

He knew it was the last thing Youji wanted to hear. He didn't much care, either. Youji hadn't wanted to listen to any of them for far too long and Ken for one was well and truly sick of it. This wasn't the right time but Ken knew there would never be a right time if by that one meant an opportune moment for him to breach the subject of Neu; there was no such thing as that. His timing would be bad whatever he did, so why not just get it over with? What did he have to lose?

(Apart from everything.)

… well, that was a risk he would have to take; nothing ventured, nothing gained to borrow a trite but truthful old phrase. Ken knew it wasn't the right time but he couldn't back off. He'd already come too far for that; he'd roused his own anger almost before he'd headed for the stairs, dealing a fatal blow to his own composure. Ken's temper was a hot, wild thing. It was a small, vicious, half-feral creature never any more than inadequately restrained, something he could only hope to keep in check, never try to master. His own impatience had ganged up on him and Ken was powerless in the face of it.

"Don't pay attention?" Youji sounded bewildered. Youji was feigning incomprehension. Youji wanted to make-believe that Ken's presence meant nothing at all and his questions even less. He sighed. Shook his head, a hank of hair tumbling into his face. He didn't bother pushing it away. "What are you talking about? What's Kase got to do with anything?"  
Ken frowned, brows furrowing. "Don't play dumb, Youji! We both know what it is I'm talking about!"  
Youji took a drag on his cigarette, exhaled vehemently. "So it's like that then." He said finally, dourly. "… What do you think you're playing at, Ken?"  
"What's that supposed to mean? I'm not—"  
"Leave it." Youji interrupted. Brusque, almost bullying. "It's not the time. Go to bed."  
"Screw going to bed." Ken said irritably. "You're awake. I'm awake. The time'll never be right so let's just get it over with."

Ken's presence made the hallway seem crowded, unnaturally so. He stood in the center of the floor, unconsciously framing himself against the entrance to the stairway. Blocking the path, as if he had been tracking down and cornering a recalcitrant target. His posture (foursquare; arms folded, feet a shoulder-width apart, head held high) somehow managed to combine aggression and a buoyant, boyish audacity with anticipation. Waiting.

Yet, stood under the belligerent moonlight, he looked washed out, curiously pallid and insubstantial as smoke in spite of his deliberately antagonistic stance and heavy clothes. Pallor, colorlessness; neither were things Youji usually associated with Ken. Tonight his eyes and hair looked darker, his skin paler; clear night subdued the warm, autumnal shades of his coloring. Something waiflike about the boy, something wan, utterly unlike his usual air of earthy, unknowing physicality. Paradoxical Ken, at ease with his own inconsistency. If Youji half-closed his eyes or let his teammate's features slip slightly out of focus he could have almost imagined he was looking at Asuka, or at something very like her. He kept his eyes open— Ken was Ken. Not a dead woman's ghost, or her reincarnation. He was Ken, he was alive, he was here.

(Touch him and he would be warm, solid, utterly animate.)

"Get what over with?" Youji asked. He sounded resentful even to his own ears; Heaven knew what Ken made of his tone.  
Ken exhaled irritably. "And I'm the one they call oblivious?" He asked rhetorically. "For fuck's sake, Youji. _Talk_ to me."

Beseeching, in spite of the anger. The _please_ was unspoken but there. It was present in Ken's tone, in the look in his eyes, in the way he suddenly dropped his gaze. For a moment he looked weary, worn-down, far older than his nineteen years. Trying, however clumsily, to reach out. Ken didn't know what he was doing but he was endeavoring to do it anyway, because he felt he ought to. He cared. So why, Youji wondered, did he feel so irritated with him?

For a moment Youji simply observed him, eyes slightly narrowed. The hair in his face, the way the moonlight brought out the planes of his cheeks, the bulky jacket that went no way to camouflaging his surprising, deceptive slenderness… Even though he was angry, even though Ken was, Youji still found he wanted to watch him. Once upon a time, he had been surprised to realize that Ken was graceful. Now he noticed the perplexing beauty to him and that too came as a surprise.

Asuka had been a beautiful dream that shattered far too soon, Neu the lucid personification of a nightmare – what of Ken? Flawed, angry, vulnerable, all-too-human Ken… even here in the pale moonlight he was too real, too comprehensively _there_ to define in the nebulous terms of fantasy.

"Youji. Please. I'm not asking that much, am I?" It should have sounded pointed but it didn't. Ken asked a genuine question.  
"I don't want to talk about Asuka." There. He'd said it. It hadn't been that hard after all.  
Ken frowned. "I don't think this is about what either of us want." He said finally. "We need to talk. Got that? _Need_ to."  
"Talk, then." Youji said. He looked away, his hair obscuring his eyes, but he could feel Ken's gaze upon him. He didn't want to look at him. Eye contact put them both in a kind of danger.

(An indefinable stirring. Something in the air aside from anger. Youji knew it; he suspected Ken didn't. To look was perilous.)

"Then stop trying to ignore me." Ken walked a dangerous line and he hadn't even noticed it. Unconsciously, he accentuated his own peculiar blend of innocence and experience. "Jesus, look beyond the end of your own nose for five bloody seconds! I know what this feels like. Why won't you let me… oh, for fuck's sake, this is all… I mean, know I'm not Asuka but I don't think I'm that bad!" … and still it was coming out all wrong.  
"I don't know what you're talking about," Youji said coldly, deliberately dismissively, "and I don't think you do either. Do you have any idea what time it is? Go to _bed_, Ken." Get away from me, before I say something, or do something, which we'll both live to regret. Something stirred as he glanced over at his companion, something Youji wished he could deny. He sighed. Why things always had to become so – why life always had to be this way, he didn't know…

… you're more like her than you realize, Ken. But you're much more than that. It frightens me. You _frighten_ me.

Youji was beginning to wonder if his touch was poison. He hadn't been able to save Asuka; the moment he met Maki it was as if he had condemned her to die, too. He had seen Asuka in her and it had doomed her. Maybe all he could hope for, now, was to keep things casual; maybe for him to aspire to anything more from another was, metaphorically, to level a gun at his partner's head and pull the trigger. We can't reach out, Ken had said desperately one warm, indolent afternoon. It's like every time we try, everything falls apart… He'd been more right than he could ever have imagined.

Maybe the best he could do for the boy was keep him well away. To keep him safe. A strange thing to think about someone like Ken Hidaka, but it had felt strange to think it of Asuka, too. He'd been right to worry then…

"Jesus Christ, and _still_ you're not listening to me!"  
"Go to bed." Youji repeated. Firmly. Desperately. "You're just… oh, Jesus, Hidaka, let it go before you get hurt. I don't know what you think you want but you're looking in all the wrong places."  
"If you don't know what I want, how do you know I won't find it?"  
"You don't know what you want, either." Youji said. He sounded calm and was grateful for it. "Just go, Ken."

Ken said nothing. His gaze said Youji was missing the point. The young man ignored it, could do nothing but ignore it – Ken couldn't know what it was he was asking for. He tried to blank him. He flicked the still-burning butt of his cigarette casually over the balustrade, half-turning and reaching for the door of his apartment. Didn't quite make it. Four paces had Ken by his side; he would never understand what impulse it was had the boy catch him firmly by the upper arm, tugging him back round to face him. The contact took him aback. His grip was tight enough to hurt, though Youji managed to keep his sudden pain, the sudden shock, under control. Sometimes he forgot that Ken was easily his equal in terms of strength.

(… to get Ken to willingly submit to him would, Youji realized, be qualitatively different to seducing a woman. Ken had something to lose no woman could ever have, no matter how aggressive and forceful she might be; any surrender would come only because he had wanted it to, not because there was no other way. The thought was disturbing, to say nothing of disturbingly seductive…)

"Stop running away." Ken said fiercely. He didn't let go of his arm.  
Youji met Ken's eyes, held his gaze. He didn't smile. "Is that what you think I'm doing?" He noted without satisfaction how the boy raised his head slightly, how his eyes widened subtly but perceptibly. He could almost feel Ken's gathering uncertainty. It was only now that he seemed to realize he, they, the both of them had unwittingly strayed onto dangerous territory. That they were fast becoming lost there.  
"Youji?" Suddenly bewildered. Suddenly aware that things weren't progressing quite as he had imagined they were. For a moment Ken felt perturbed, but only for a moment. He brushed the feeling of unease off easy as a dog quitting water and shaking itself dry. "Oh, screw this, I— what am I to you anyway?"  
"What do you mean? Why are you even asking that?"  
"Why do you think? I need to _know_, for fuck's sake! What _am_ I, Youji?" Ken repeated angrily, meeting the flat green challenge of Youji's stare. "Plan B? You've barely even spoken to me since Neu showed up except to tell me I'm getting in your way! What exactly do you think that looks like? What are you trying to imply, that I'll do until someone better comes along? If all you want is Asuka then what the Hell am _I_ doing here?"

And when it comes, it all comes at once. Ken let his hand fall, gazing up at Youji in frustrated opposition. He hadn't intended to say all that. He'd wanted to put it differently. More elegantly. Too bad for him – he really hadn't been designed to bottle things up. Maybe if he'd told Youji all this the minute it started bothering him, he wouldn't be feeling so utterly infuriated now. That Youji didn't seem to know how to answer, that all the blonde did was look at him as if on some level he had utterly failed to understand, only made him feel angrier.

Sometimes Ken thought that he could hate Youji. Hate him for being so smooth, so languid. Hate the tall, blonde, handsome arrogance of the guy, the attitude he cultivated, the way he pretended the world and everything in it was his for the taking. Hate his verdant eyes, languid smile, the soft, deliberate chaos of his curls and the way they practically demanded he ran his fingers through them. Hate the way that he – this guy, his tall, wry teammate – had made him forget Kase almost completely. What the Hell right did Youji think he had to be like this, to cause such confusion in him? Youji… God, he mystified him!

Ken hated him so much it hurt.

" What is this supposed to be?" he demanded, because he detested the silence and anger was easy. Because he would rather give in to familiar fury than be forced to admit he was frightened, upset, hopelessly desirous. When had he started to need Youji? Why did he want Youji to need him back, why did the fact that the guy didn't seem to want to do anything of the sort make him feel so angry? Just how fucked up was he, and how selfish? "Sublimation? You'll only try not to think of Asuka if I promise not to call you Kase? That kind of thing? Because if that's all this is to you then you can bloody well forget it. You can get that from anyone, you don't need me!"

(And I don't want Kase, for God's sake. Not any more— why can't I tell you this? Because I'm scared…)

"You don't know what you're talking about, Ken." Youji said finally. His voice was cold; anger lay in wait. He wanted Ken to shut up and leave him alone. He wanted to grab him by the shoulders and scream at him, slap him, make him hurt. But mostly he wanted to kiss him, to push him against the wall and let what happened next, happen, and Ken didn't have a goddamn clue. He couldn't have done or he'd never have said the things he'd been doing – he was too young, still a kid in a lot of ways. Innocent— the word rose to mind unbidden.  
Ken turned away, facing the blank block of darkness that was the entrance to the stairwell, but he watched Youji out of the corner of suspicion-narrowed eyes. "Like Hell I don't. It's always been about missing Asuka, hasn't it?" Youji didn't have room for anyone else…he might as well have asked Aya to give a shit about someone other than his bloody sister! The realization – for that was what it felt like – hurt. Why did this have to feel like a betrayal? "You don't need me. You never did. Christ, I'm such a fucking idiot… oh, screw it, I'm going to bed."

Now Ken made as if to turn and leave – why had he come here, what good had he done? Now Youji reached out to stop him, his fingers closing around Ken's wrist. An instinctive move, spontaneous, startling him almost as much as it did Ken – a surrender to the instinctive, to the twin forces of opportunism and baulked desire. He couldn't help feeling that, on some level at least, Ken would approve. Arresting his progress, Youji half-dragged Ken toward the wall, backing him against it and holding him there, pinning the boy's wrists with his own hands. Ken yelped but only in understated confusion, more bemused than angry, more angry than shocked. Youji was close, so close he could feel him though, apart from the forceful, earnest way the man gripped his wrists, they hadn't touched.

Ken swore viciously, his brown eyes full of fierce confusion, but aside from that he said nothing. He didn't know what to say. He always knew what to say but he didn't know now. Even the curse had seemed somehow inapt. He was drifting. Lost without a trace. And the boundaries shifted.

"This isn't about Asuka, Ken." Youji said into the heavy silence that followed. It sounded like a threat.  
"Oh, no?" He threw the words at Youji like he was issuing the man with a challenge. "It's _misplaced_, Youji! That's all! You miss her and I'm convenient!" Daring Youji to tell him that it was true. That it wasn't true.  
"It's not about Asuka." Youji repeated firmly. "God damn it, kid, I knew you were obtuse but this beats everything. It's got nothing to do with her!" He could practically feel Ken's tension, the controlled strength of him, though for now he bided his time. Waited. That Ken hadn't lashed out already Youji took as a positive sign. Deep down, Youji knew the boy didn't really want to go anywhere.  
"I am not fucking obtuse!" Ken shouted, unable to quite believe what they were talking about. Unable to believe what was happening. He fidgeted uncomfortably, disconcerted by Youji's proximity, the hot, gentle whisper of the young man's breath against his cheek and the angry, impassioned look in his eyes, distracted out of antagonism. He tugged tentatively on one of his trapped wrists but Youji was gripping them like he meant it. Okay, Ken told himself, I started this. I can handle it…

(He could, he knew, easily have forced Youji to let him go and if it came down to it he would do. But…)

"Then why in Hell can't you see this is about you?" Youji demanded. "Christ almighty, Hidaka, get a clue!"  
"You're blaming _me_ for this?"  
"Too right I'm fucking blaming you." The blonde retorted, his voice low. "You shouldn't be doing this to me."  
"Doing what to you? Youji… look, this isn't making any sense." Ken spoke deliberately, artificially calmly, hoping to belie the rising sense of panic symptomatic of a loss of control; the situation ran wild, gleefully liberated from his wary direction. It felt as if he were trying to talk a man down. As if Youji were precariously perched on the edge of the building and contemplating taking a step forward, a single step into infinity; as if all that stopped him was the fact he was talking to him, trying to impart some small measure of calm. "I know I shouldn't have mentioned Asuka. I—"

Youji said nothing. He simply gave Ken an exasperated frown and kissed him. A pyrotechnic of a kiss, primal as night. A kiss which burnt and scarred, sure as flame. It tore into him, that kiss. It left him stunned.

It made Ken feel like screaming.

(—and something inside him asked him who it was he was trying to talk down. Youji, himself, both of them, neither. It asked him if he was trying to convince himself it meant nothing because it would make it easier to stop this situation in its tracks. For all he'd played any number of parts, in his time, that he was fundamentally uncomfortable in Ken was not about to let himself become the target of a misplaced need. He'd had enough of being used, willingly or otherwise. This was… this simply could not be realistic—)

For God's sake, Youji, this is going too far!

The blonde drew back – sometime. Ken couldn't have said how long it had been. He just knew it had been too long, hadn't been nearly long enough. He leant heavily against the wall, dazed and struggling to catch his breath. He felt too shocked to think of anger. At some point his eyes had fallen closed; now he opened them again, locked gazes with Youji, blinked in surprise at the utter sincerity of his face. Jesus, that confused him. He could have understood it if it had been a joke…

Even in the moonlight, Youji could tell that Ken was blushing. He smiled, deliberately languid; Ken looked at him in surprise for a moment or two then forced himself to look away, murmuring something barely audible and, or so he suspected, only semi-coherent. There was something endearing about the ease with which Ken could be made to blush, and about how irritated he got when it was pointed out to him. When he was angry, when he was confused or embarrassed… what, Youji wondered, was the reason for this one?

It made him want to kiss him again.

"You see? You don't know what you're talking about." Youji said softly, insistently. His lips were bare inches from Ken's own.  
"It's just misplaced!" Ken replied vehemently, turning away, offering Youji only the moon-pale plane of his cheek, the dark sweep of his lashes over averted eyes, the arch of his vulnerable throat. "It's a mistake, this is _insane_, it's got to be—" Step away from the edge, Youji. Step _away_…  
"Shut up, Ken." Youji whispered into the curve of his neck, a skein of his curls brushing gently against the boy's cheekbone. Ken caught his breath, tried to push himself back into the wall. It's wrong, he wanted to say, it's just… all wrong, we shouldn't be doing this, not when you don't really want me anyway – you don't, do you? "I've never known anyone like you for getting in the way of what they want."  
"What I want?" Ken echoed. "I thought you said you didn't know what I wanted!" Flushed. Furious. Embarrassed and enraged at the same time.  
Youji laughed softly. "Trust you to bring that up." He murmured. He thought he'd worked it out anyway. Funny. Ken looked as if he were trying to pull away and yet he wasn't. For all his smaller, slighter stature Ken was easily as strong as he was and rather more agile. If he genuinely had been even half as reluctant as he was endeavoring to appear, he would have been trying one Hell of a lot harder to get away. Ken wasn't exactly struggling. Wasn't even truly exasperated. In two minds, hm, Ken? He smiled significantly, knowing full well the boy couldn't see him. Was that important?

It had almost been a mistake on Ken's part to look away when all it meant was that Youji's lips grazed against the lobe of his ear, when it allowed the young man to seek out and find the sensitive skin of his throat, forcing a small, fractured gasp from his lips. Another mistake. Ken shivered, his eyes falling closed again even as he fought to keep control, find composure. It was hard, so damned hard… this is all completely crazy, he thought desperately. Youji's missing Asuka and that's all there is to it, right? Right?

(Being trapped in a corporeal fantasy was almost as unsettling as living through a waking nightmare.)

Shit, he'd had no idea that having someone kiss his neck would so effectively throw him off-balance… when was the last time he'd been touched like this? Had he ever been? Kase had— God, he would not let himself think of him. He was appalled, he was allured; he wanted Youji to stop and let him leave, he didn't want to go anywhere. Ken didn't know what he wanted. All he could think of to do was cling to the symbolic shield that was the memory of Asuka.

(Dreams are dreams and should know their place.)

"Youji…" Ken said softly, desperately, "for fuck's sake, please… cut it _out_." It was more an attempt to convince himself he didn't want this than it was to try and drive Youji away. A protest for the sake of a protest, because protesting was the right thing to do – he recognized it every bit as clearly as Youji did.  
"You don't mean that." Youji said gently, as if it were obvious. It was obvious. He knew it for a woman's soft, mischievous ploy, when done deliberately, but this was Ken. Straightforward, naïve Ken, bluntly boyish. Flirtatious verbal tricks didn't suit him, not when he didn't really understand how they worked. He said what he thought and that, Youji knew, was only where it ended. _Cut it out_. A desperate attempt to pretend he wasn't losing control.  
"No…" And he didn't even know if it was a denial or not. The walls had already been breeched.

This time Youji's kiss was deep, dizzying, deliberately forceful. Calculated, or so it seemed, to erode what little resistance Ken had been able to mount. This time Ken found himself helplessly responding to it, closing his eyes and relaxing into it even as his mind querulously demanded he snap out of it, walk away. How? How the Hell was he meant to ignore this when he wasn't even sure why he was trying to resist? He'd initiated this; it had been his call, his move, always. Why complain when a gambit paid off—?

Youji's grip loosened on his wrists, speaking of the young man's confidence, his certainty of the hold he had over him. Any other time Ken supposed he might have resented him for that, for his ease; not now. His fingers trailed down the exposed skin of Ken's forearms, a touch which seemed to linger long after his hands had moved away, long after Youji found his waist and drew him closer, carefully but calculatingly disarranging the hem of his t-shirt. To touch was a danger, too; a subtly painful, irrevocable thing. Ken sensed it, grew apprehensive even as he wrapped his arms around Youji's neck, willingly yielding to him.

Willing submission. He let Youji kiss him, pulled him closer, lost himself in sensation. God, he was going under and he'd forgotten how to care…

— but it was crazy. One of them was crazy. He wasn't Asuka and he was almost convinced that was exactly who Youji wanted him to be. Rationality screamed at him, demanded that he break free from Youji's embrace and bolt for the stairs, stop this ridiculous situation in its tracks. You're more than a vehicle, Ken, his mind pointed out furiously. You can't _want _to be a fantasy figure, an object of vague, undefined and strictly impersonal lust. You're not just a convenient body for Youji to project his dreams onto. Step back. For Christ's sake, Ken, step back – if he wasn't even listening to himself how could he expect Youji to?

Don't make me jump, Youji. If you go over, you'll take me with you.

And the world closed down, reduced to the two of them. Sensation ensnared them, trapping them in unsympathetic isolation, alone with themselves and one another. Far too close now, dangerously close; Ken could feel the heat of the blonde's body, the gentle, coastal surge of his breathing, the ridiculously pointed weight of him. The way his touch burnt, how the feel of Youji's hands tracing the line of his spine left him numbed and scarred and breathless. The blonde smelt of cigarettes and warm leather and musk and half-forgotten fear and, vaguely, the metallic taint of oxidizing blood. Heady. Potent as his kisses. To Ken, touching death was to reaffirm his own existence – if this had been just another night, might he have found it easier to let go? Maybe…

… because after a mission he wanted to embrace comfort, wanted to reaffirm that he could still feel. Because he'd never let himself do any such thing, before now. Ken clung to Youji as if he were the only thing in the world he could be sure of. It was nothing more than the truth.

The blonde pulled away slightly, his gloved hands resting on Ken's hips. Impossible for him to keep the smile from his face. Misplaced? No. Fuck misplaced. You're wrong, Ken, and I think you know you are. The boy's wide brown eyes were dazed yet somehow troubled, his lips slightly parted as if in wordless invitation. The way he blushed, Youji thought, was absolutely priceless. Ken wasn't Asuka, was a very different proposition to Asuka for all that he had reminded Youji of her from the first – this boy was, where it counted, nothing like the woman he had lost but the discrepancies charmed. Youji knew that he had to let go sometime; he couldn't keep denying the future simply because it was different from the past. Not better, not even appreciably worse, merely different.

(He'd moved into another story, stepped into the role of another character. Life was different; he was different. He couldn't recapture what was gone – even had the world remained the same he had changed far too much for what he had once had to suit the man he was now. He had learnt from Neu's malign tutelage. What had hurt the most about the betrayal of his own memories was that she had only been stating a fact: what was gone was gone.)

"Youji, for God's sake, I'm not Asu—"  
"No." Youji said softly, meeting his eyes. Solemn as Sunday. "You're you, Ken. Understand?"  
Ken swallowed and nodded. "Understand."

To speak now would be a sin.

Sometimes things only feel natural. There is a flow, sometimes, to reality which allows one's actions to glide languid and certain as a river tracing its pre-ordained journey from source to shore: life finds a progression that is both instinctive and compelling, and no more possible for an individual to resist than for the river to flow in reverse. No way to drift and yet still manage to move against the current. Sometimes the only way to go is forward…

… even if to step forward is to fall further…

And so Ken let his hold slip, willingly let go of himself in the face of the comforting recklessness of it all. Cast adrift, he let Youji take control. Gratefully, he surrendered to the sweet domination that Youji offered him, which he had enthusiastically sought. He was lost: so much so it hardly seemed to matter any more.

The room was dark and cool as any cavern, illuminated only by the cold, wan light of the moon falling almost accidentally through bare, open windows, the slight night breeze catching and tumbling the drapes. The competitive, recycled glow of the Tokyo night had for once been outdone by nature. Their clothes had been left where they fell, scattered haphazard across Youji's bedroom floor and looking for all the world like the poignant debris left behind after a car crash or at a crime scene, things which had once meant something, been jealously guarded by someone who was now no one, someone who no longer knew or cared what had happened to their boots, their coat, their shirt…

It barely signified. So little is truly relevant when the world closes down, when reality is reduced to nothing but one other, to the terrible fire of their touch, the sweet, intoxicating poison that marks their kisses and the rhythmic, archaic stirring that is their heartbeat.

Absolute insanity.

Ken knew he shouldn't be encouraging Youji. Shouldn't be allowing this – the situation to continue. If this was… if it meant something, anything at all, it could wait. If not, if not then why was he doing this…? Losing himself to the wanton anarchy of Youji's kisses, losing his senses and in so doing losing everything… it was _crazy_— but he knew that the only way to move was forward. For a long time now, he had known that he could only ever weather a storm.

Ken shivered at the feel of the night air on his suddenly exposed skin. Shivered, yet still he blushed. He didn't know where to put himself, didn't even know where to look. He pressed his body closer to Youji's, luxuriating in his warmth and closing his eyes; a problem solved. Tentatively, he rested his hands on the young man's shoulders, almost shyly drew him into a clumsy, ardent kiss. Catching his breath at the feel of Youji's hands on his naked back; crying out softly, in sheer surprise, when he lost his footing and stumbled backwards. Dragging Youji down with him only for the bed to break their fall.

"Youji—" he began indignantly, only to break off with a stifled gasp, looking up at Youji in bewildered panic as the blonde rested two fingers over his parted lips. A gentle, insistent pressure.  
"Ssh." Youji whispered: his voice was low, intense, assertive. "Don't speak, Ken." To speak was to usher in complication. All words could be now were awkward, inappropriate things, serving only to stain the irreproachable calm of the night, imperfect though it was. Words broke the seductive spell of silence.

The only way to survive a lucid dream was to negate veracity; Ken was coming to comprehend that. For a moment Youji simply watched him through the soft, discreet veil of his chaotic, wind-blown curls, his gaze level and contemplative and, for once, urgently resolute. Sex and death: the two things in his life which transcended humor. And Ken watched him back, a study in quiet, expectant apprehension, tension and anticipation and unexpected grave focus melting into one. Tangled hair, pupils dilated so as to practically swallow the brown of his irises, biting down slightly on his lower lip as he tried to control the chaos of his breathing. And blushing, still. Ken was no classic beauty by any stretch of the imagination but Youji had discovered the beauty in him all the same.

This wasn't Asuka. And it didn't matter that it wasn't.

Ken lost patience. His embrace was gauche, childlike; it was a curiously platonic gesture, the kind of thing he might have done to anyone, offering contact only for the sake of the reassurance that it brought. He doesn't know what he's doing, Youji realized with a sudden nervous thrill. Perhaps it shouldn't have surprised him, that fundamental lack of awareness. Innocence. God damn. He didn't need to think about that, of the unnerving temperament of the unworldly, or of how long it had been since he had last tasted anything of the kind. Ken was frowning in concentration, his uncertainty palpable even as he hesitantly ran one hand over the curve of Youji's shoulder. He doesn't know what he's _doing_.

But he was trying. Youji kissed him again – a firm, passionate, lingering thing, distracting him from his desperate, awkward focus, from hopeful apprehension. Loving the feeling of the boy's fingers twining in his hair, further disordering already tangled curls, as he deepened the kiss. Youji surrendered to the touch and, with it, to the urgent inevitability that was his own arousal. You can't do it wrong, Ken. You can't— but he didn't even know enough to know that much.

A cynical innocent, fully grown yet somehow still a boy. Impossible, contradictory Ken, caught halfway between the darkness and the light, always.

A single fluid motion brought Youji over and above him, brought their bodies into convergence; necessary preliminary to union. Ken caught his breath at the bulk of him, the warmth of him, the feel of one of Youji's hands tracing its careful, calculated way down his side, his touch smoldering and sure as a slow-burning fuse. The warmth of him came as a welcome shock after the night-chill air. For the first time in months he positively craved the sensation of heat, hungered for it just as he did for assimilation and the delirium of Youji's touch. He gasped slightly against Youji's lips, a strangely fevered sound, tugging him still closer. Stay, Youji. Don't go anywhere and it might still be all right… If this was what it was to go crazy, he thought he could learn to live with it.

Closer. With his eyes closed, Ken found that Youji overwhelmed him – the touch of his hands and lips, the gentle graze of hair sweeping against skin, the strangely reassuring weight of his body. His heartbeat, rushed yet rhythmical and felt every bit as perfectly as it was heard. Alive. _Alive_. Ken's own arms were around Youji's shoulders; he knew himself a target and a willing one. Knowing that to yield to Youji was all that he desired, to drown in sensation and do so gratefully…

He could feel Youji's urgency. The blonde glanced down at him, his eyes half-lidded yet still burning with a febrile resolve. Caught upon the crazy current of his own passion. No way out now— on some level Ken had understood him perfectly. The boy had smiled.

Ken cried out as Youji invaded him: the last of his defenses freely breached and he screamed briefly, the breath knocked out of him, the sudden bite of pain at the penetration throwing pleasure into ever starker relief. Reality splintered like a wineglass knocked clumsy to the floor, shattered and finally slipped away entirely, leaving him trapped in the snare of Youji's arms as the storm, long-threatened, impatiently anticipated, broke over him.

They lost themselves in one another.

(And even now they had only come full circle, with both beginning and ending discovered almost by accident in the still of the night. Finding an ending which was in itself another beginning, another step forward. Continuity. Starting with nothing at all – just a strange aspiration and the tentative brush of Ken's fingertips against the back of Youji's hand, contact made as much in fear as hope – and ending likewise with nothing but the willed annihilation of passion…)

Ken's eyes were closed, his head back; his breath caught and tearing in his throat as he struggled to find control, biting his lip to force back a soft cry. His nails dug into Youji's shoulders as the man moved over and inside him, his motions sure and rhythmical as the impassioned cadence of his heart. Ken clung to him as if he were drowning and Youji the only thing that stopped him going under completely. The subtle pain of his fingernails was, to Youji, nothing at all. His world was reduced to heat and tension and Ken, uncharacteristically yet unequivocally surrendered to him: nothing more than that, something both familiar and strange. Lost, but lost together…

… and falling, as one, into the infinite.

Climax claimed Youji sure as his own desire had done, breaking over him and scattering his thoughts still further. Finding release in the sinuous warmth of his own orgasm; a tidal wave of furious tension broke and receded, leaving him becalmed, drained and struggling for breath, clutching Ken to him with a ferocity that surprised them both. Ken's gasp, partway between a scream and an incompletely stifled sob, followed bare seconds later. His own grip tightened on Youji's shoulders as the blonde withdrew and he buried his head in the curve of Youji's neck, drawing a deep, shaky breath, and then another.

The world crept slowly back to greet them. Finding them lying on Youji's bed on top of the tumbled sheets, clinging to one another like the survivors of a shipwreck, dazed, disoriented, startled by the stark fact of their own endurance as they lay together on the unfamiliar shore. Ken clung desperately to Youji, pressed dizzyingly close to him, his eyes still tightly shut as if he were frightened of what he might see when he opened them. Youji delighted in the sensation of the boy's hair brushing against his cheek, of the warmth and the reassuring weight of him, the tautness of his embrace. Ken had betrayed himself by the fierce possessiveness of his own anger; he had told him he loved him and it was exhilarating, flattering, frightening.

What am I to you, Youji?  
Everything, Ken.

Ken shivered as the cold gradually drew attention to itself, raising goose pimples on exposed flesh. Wordlessly, Youji drew the sheets up over the two of them, settling back beneath them and watching with affectionate gravity as Ken curled up next to him, arms entwined around his neck.

Passion burns with a furious, brilliant flame, but it quickly burns itself out. The dying of the light left Ken exhausted, only too prepared to let exhaustion claim him, to lie still and tranquil in Youji's arms and drift thankfully into sleep, but his mind was unquiet and thrown into sudden confusion. He knew he wanted to speak, to say – anything, even if all words could do was complicate, but what was there to say? He didn't know. He only knew that he was afraid to speak. Afraid to break the subtle enchantment silence had wrought.

The silence hung between them, thick and charged and unnaturally heavy as the air before a summer storm and possessing the same air of eerie tranquility – the kind of pointed, unsettling tranquility one longs to see shatter. The silence was an unwieldy thing, gravid with words left unsaid. To draw back now, Youji knew, would be fatal.

"Ken." The soft insistency of Youji's voice, near and far. "Do you understand?" He brushed the tangled hair from Ken's closed eyes, carried on doing so long after losing any excuse for it.  
The boy raised his head, opening his eyes. "Understand what?" Confused. Contemplative.  
"It isn't about Asuka. This never was about her. Not really."  
Ken blinked in sleepy confusion. "Never?" He said disbelievingly.  
"No." Youji said. "You don't listen either, do you?" His laugh was a gentle thing, caught and tumbled on the restful tumult of his breath. "It's about you, you idiot. _Now_ do you understand?"

Fools together, then. Ken sighed contentedly, shifting slightly in Youji's arms, seeking his warmth. He knew that a man like him had no right to feel happy, that there was no justification for his seeking solace in the embrace of another murderer, but happy was what he was. Youji understood – the blonde understood far more clearly than he did.

It wasn't about Asuka. No more than it had been about Kase…

Kase had been there, of course, just as Asuka – as Neu would have been: pale, jealous, guilt-born phantoms the both of them, watchful and resentful. Impossible to imagine they wouldn't – the restless, vengeful dead never let go that easily – but, slightly but discernibly, their grip had been loosened. Passion had performed a strange exorcism of their pasts, incomplete though it may have been. Ken knew that he could never forget where he'd come from and what he had been, any more than Youji could be expected to do the same, but from now on there was nowhere to go but forward, away from the smoldering ruins of what had gone before. It left them hesitating on the threshold of an uncertain future, but clear-eyed and stood side by side. Together, they would be stronger.

"Okay," Ken said quietly; two sweet syllables speaking of an easy accord. "I understand."

_-ende-_


End file.
